Formula D is a board game released by Asmodee that focuses on vehicular racing in a turn based format. The game uses a system of gears for movement, such as first allows moving from 1 to 2 spaces, second allows 2-4 and so forth. The game also utilizes "wear points" that a player's car can lose if they move through designated corners too fast among other situations that invoke vehicle damage. The stock game comes with two tracks on a double-sided board, the Monaco Grand Prix and a fictional "Race City", although expansion boards exist for just about every other real Formula 1 track as well as several fictional ones. The game is already complicated enough and it only grows more with the advanced set of rules that divide a players wear points into several categories, adds weather patterns and introduces characters to play as.
Formula D provides examples of:
- Car Fu: Players can actively end their moves next to another car to try and damage it (and themselves), Derek Manson forces the player they collided into to roll twice, potentially damaging an opponent's body two times. Stanley Washington takes it in a different form and, once per race, can toss his radio playing bad music out his window at an adjacent opponent which will damage a random system on the victim's car.
- Critical Existence Failure: Cars run just fine even if they're one wear point away from elimination (be it the generic WP in beginner rules or any of the systems in advanced rules which includes Tires, Body, Engine and Road Handling) but they are eliminated and removed from play once they do. Only the wear points for the Gearbox and Brakes can be reduced to 0 and the car will still work fine, it simply means you can't perform the actions that damage those systems like skipping gears during a downshift. Tires can also be reduced to 0 without elimination but doing so spins you out and you have to spend a turn to turn your car around, skidding past a corner by more than one space after that or skidding past a corner where it puts your Tire WP into the negative will eliminate you outright.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Any player, regardless of their (character's) gender, that passes Li Tsu Sin outside of a curve moves one space less, slowing down to get a better glance at her.
- Drives Like Crazy: Encouraged, driving safe may reduce the risk of elimination but you tend not to rank as high as say, driving hard enough to lose all but a single wear point.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Dimitri Tzarof's car is more robust at the cost of his tire durability, in the event that the engine would otherwise take damage, it only takes one point of damage and the roll to determine engine damage is reduced to 1-3 on the black die (1-2 in the rain).
- Handicapped Badass: Dimitri Tzarof, artwork in the manual and character card depicts him in a wheelchair, not that this stops him from racing.
- Nitro Boost: The advanced street race introduces nitrous that boosts the player by several spaces dependent on the gear number (first for a single space and so forth), Montoya Cadena can boost this by three spaces regardless of gear if he so chooses.
- Roll-and-Move: You roll the die corresponding to what gear you've chosen to be in, and then move your car forward the number of spaces you roll.
- Subsystem Damage: The advanced rules allocates the cars damaged systems into several categories. Which is: 6 Tire WP, 3 Engine, Body, Gearbox and Brake WP and 2 road handling WP. Any damage event can damage one or multiple systems and characters in the advanced street race rules have their own custom allocations along with abilities that reduce/repair damage to themselves or invoke damage to their opponents. Players can also allocate wear points to their own systems up to a total of 20 which is less than what the cars and characters have by default.
- Weather of Racing: At the beginning of a qualifying round or a race proper, the die is rolled to determine the outlook which either means the entire session takes place in clear weather, rain or the weather can change during the race (overcast). When the weather can change during a race, the change occurs when a player rolls a 20 or 30 in 5th or 6th gear, respectively, the roll for engine damage also occurs like usual and then there's a roll that moves the weather scale upwards toward clear weather, keep it where it is or move it downwards toward rain in order to make the transition gradual and not where it can suddenly go from sunny to raining. When it is raining, cars in a corner move further than normal, increasing the chances of losing Tire WP by skidding past. A player can make a pit stop to change to dedicated rain tires but those have the disadvantage of wearing out faster than normal when skidding past a corner, especially when it isn't raining. Conversely, a driver can change to softer racing slicks which allows them to add a space to their movement (this movement is not compulsory) but the penalties for skipping a corner are also doubled and they handle even worse in the rain compared to hard tires, skidding even further. Julien 'Frogger' Marcellin not only has the Weather Frog ability to re-roll the die for determining the change in weather (both for the outlook at the beginning of the qualifying rounds or the race and when the weather changes during a race) but he also skids one space less than usual in a curve in the rain. Tunnels, denoted by the roadway being a darker gray than the rest of the track, like the one in the Circuit de Monaco are unaffected by rain and movement through them are treated as if driving in dry conditions.
- Wrench Wench: Jenny Slivers. Unsurprisingly, her ability is Experienced Mechanic which awards her 4 WP when finishing a lap compared to the usual 2 to be allocated to systems of her choice, not allowing to exceed the starting amount.
